The Civil War

“He hates what he believes and loves it at the same time,” -Kitchen Sink by TOP

This week I’ve been studying the American Civil War. From the Battle of Bull Run to the Battle of Cold Harbor, to the Siege of Petersburg, and many bloody battles in between, the whole thing was a viscous mess.

The prompt says to tell what my favorite part about this weeks’ lessons. I quite liked the fact that I didn’t have a PDF worksheet. I like the map, I think mostly for the fact that I used sharpies, which I love.

What I found most interesting about studying the Civil War was the fact that I’m human, that they were human. Me and you and them and us, as a species, we did that. Even though we weren’t alive then, and we had nothing to do with it, we did that. And life as we know it now is a product of what people did then.

Can you imagine it? Not being a specific person or anything, but just being there, apart of it? Fighting for what you believe in, sometimes to the death, fighting for your rights and your freedom. Killing people. That’s the bit that gets me; people killed people. I mean it’s completely downplayed from what it was, made softer for the public’s consumption, but it was brutal and bloody and violent. And that’s the thing. Violence is sick. Its freaking disgusting. BUT at the same time, I get it because I’ve got some freakish, violent fantasies, and I’ll cheer when someone gets a popped in the face, and I love horror movies and oh my gosh. And then I guess that’s human nature, right? We are violent and murderous, but at the same time loving and caring and sweet. I can’t think about any of this without twisting it into a pressing psychological matter, which I find disturbing in myself, and along with the fact that apparently “everyone goes through stuff like this”, I find people in general disturbing. After this thought process, I go back to the matter at hand, the Civil War, and basically I decide that everyone involved just cared so much about what they believed and what they thought was right, that they would defend it with everything they had, crossing psychological lines and mental borders and moral boundaries, killing and maiming and destroying those who stood in the way.

Slavery was one of the baseline causes of the Civil War. You could say it was THE cause, but that wouldn’t be necessarily true. The area the Southern states occupied were more equipped with the natural resources and good soil and such to grow crops such as cotton and tobacco, so they grew and developed and a great many plantations popped up, and as they used slaves for laborers on plantations, slaves were more employed in the Southern area rather than the Northern area, and Southerners relied more heavily upon slaves for their income. The boss-men of the country tried to tell the states what they could do and what they couldn’t slave-wise, saying that this state or the other would be a slave state or a non-slave state, which freaked the Southerners out because a lot of them had became prissy gentlemen who couldn’t work like the slaves had done. They wished to secede, to make their own country were slavery was perfectly legal and they couldn’t be told they could own slaves. Now, Abraham Lincoln thought that secession was illegal, although he didn’t really have a position on slavery at the beginning; he said he wouldn’t get into that because it wasn’t his business. But he did think secession was wrong, as I said, and that was what the fight was about. These states had every right to secede, even if they had shoddy reasons for wanting to do so. And the people believed that they did have this right, even those against slavery. It doesn’t make sense for them to not have it. Lincoln was going against what the people believed, and he realized it. He changed his stance. He changed it from anti-secession to anti-slavery, and this grabbed the people. Many thought slavery was wrong, possibly a by-product of not relying on the slaves to keep food on the table, possibly pity, possibly its just they thought it was wrong to treat other humans like defecation. Lincoln gained a following with this new stance, enough so that the Union side was able to beat the rebel side. There was no secession, slavery was abolished, the war officially ended.

This is the Civil War to my understanding. Battles took place that were bloody and vicious, and things were gained that aren’t so much material as emotional… And people became free. The notion that a human could own another human was abrogated.

The War of 1812

The war of 1812 was America’s first war as a nation. They fought hard in many battles, and although they war ended in a “status quo antebellum” (state existing before war) , meaning that all territory won in battles was given back and it was as if the war didn’t happen, America still considered it a victory because it showed Britain that they were serious and could stand their ground.

This war decided how much pull America would have in foreign affairs and trade. President Jefferson wanted to find a way to keep shipping goods to foreign countries, but not be involved in foreign wars. As Britain and France were at war with eachother, neither wanted American ships to bring goods to the other country, and both sides would stop American cargo ships to search them. These encounters could get violent, so in 1807 Jefferson issued the Embargo Act, restricting American goods to America only. Goods weren’t to be sent to any foreign country at all. This was done in an effort to make Britain and France realize that they needed American shipments and that they couldn’t just seize cargo ships and attack sailors.

The plan backfired. America lost money, and goods rotted in ships on the docks. Before Jefferson left the office, he signed a bill that canceled the Embargo Act. James Madison, Jefferson’s successor in Presidency, tried to continue shipments to Britain and France without being involved in the war, but the encounters on the ships became more and more violent, and the American people got angrier and angrier. Something had to be done.

War Hawks were those in favor of engaging in the war. The War Hawks were the new, younger generation of America, wanting to fight for their freedom like their forefathers did in the Revolutionary War. This group was led by people such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, who persuaded Madison to ask Congress for a Declaration of War in June 1812.

In 1813, the majority of battles won were won by America, until August when the British stormed DC and burned the White House, The War Office, And the Treasury. They retreated soon after.

In September, there were two American victories. One at Lake Champlain, which cut British interference off to North, and the other in Baltimore at Fort McHenry, which was bombed and attacked for a whole 25 hours, and which also was what inspired Francis Scott Henry to write what is now our country’s national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

It is now 1814. Talk of peace begins around August in Europe, as American victories at Plattsburg and in Baltimore had convinced Britain that peace was best. On Christmas Eve, 1814, The Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the war. Except the war didn’t end.

People had to sail across the ocean to get word to both American and British troops in America that a treaty had been signed, and that the war was over. This took weeks, weeks during which the unofficial last battle of the war was going on.

This last battle was The Battle of New Orleans, in which American troops were led by Andrew Jackson. They were led well, with British casualties amounting to 2,000 compared to America’s 13 dead.

While the war was officially over, it was still tense between America and Britain. But America had established that it was a force to be reckoned with, and that they won’t back down.